The Enemy Within: The NeoCon Hijacking of
America

[The
foreign strategy of the US must be]: "... unapologetic,
idealistic, assertive and well funded. America must not only
be the world's policeman or its sheriff, it must be its
beacon and guide. Our first objective is to prevent the
re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant
consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy
and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power
from dominating a region whose resources would, under
consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global
power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the
territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia
There are three additional aspects to this objective: First
the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and
protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing
potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater
role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their
legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we
must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced
industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our
leadership or seeking to overturn the established political
and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms
for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role."

- Defense Planning
Guidance developed in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, endorsed as
PNAC ideology and now established Bush foreign
policy.

"Fascism should more properly be called
corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate
power."

- Benito Mussolini

"What kind of
victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference
does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of
totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy
What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against
God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who
sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred
duty."

-
Gandhi

*****************

Deep
in the halls of Washington a putrid wind of sweeping
ideology festers, swirling like a hurricane from the
Atlantic seaboard, becoming a tornado in the frozen tundras
of the Midwest, an impenetrable and monstrous fire wall
consuming vast tracts of open expanse in the West and a
sweltering drought drying up the nation s future. This
phenomenon has engendered itself onto an American landscape
that remains oblivious as to its dark and ominous designs
for the country and the world. The neo-conservative movement
it is called, an ideology fostered by a cabal of powerful
and influential members of the establishment that today sit
at or near the top of the White House, Pentagon, National
Security Agency and State Department. Like a virus that was
given new life, the once dormant group, for years denied the
claws of power, suddenly awoke and spread through all levels
of the US government with the appointment of George W. Bush
in 2000. This cabal of Machiavelli and autocratic-style
believers of power is now deeply entrenched in the highest
positions of our government, determining policy and the
direction our government and by consequence our nation is
headed in.

The names might sound familiar. Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John
Bolton, James Woolsley, Lewis Libby, Jeb Bush, Richard
Perle, Frank Gafney, William Kristol, Elliot Abrams, Robert
Kagan and many, many others. Think tanks like the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for a New
American Century (PNAC) spew their ideology. Media such as
Fox News and periodicals such as the Weekly Standard rant
their propaganda. Like vultures waiting to feed off a dead
carcass they surround the president, hissing commands and
suggestions as to how the country will be run. This
government behind the government is responsible for our
quagmire in Iraq; it is responsible for our unilateralist
foreign policy and our unyielding support for Ariel Sharon
and the Israeli right-wing Likud Party. The neocons are
responsible for alienating the world against us. Their
agenda has usurped the interests and the goals of the
people, the expertise and suggestions of Pentagon generals
and analysts, the policy making ability of lifetime State
Department brokers, CIA, NSA, DIA and other intelligence
agencies findings and conclusions and the overall will of
the world community. The cabal has since 2000 taken all the
steps necessary to indoctrinate us to a new world order in
their quest to impose a global ideology that is forever
altering the future course of world events.

September 11,
2001 will be the date history will remember in infamy as the
day the world s landscape changed. It was the day the
salivating neocons had been waiting for, gleefully licking
their chops at the coming feast they knew awaited. 9/11 was
the Pearl Harbor they needed in order to impose their
twisted ideology of empire building through perpetual
pre-emptive warfare onto the world. They now had a
vulnerable and mourning population to begin molding. An
American public that feared like never before was all too
easy to manipulate. Seen on live TV by almost every
American, from a plethora of camera angles, from beginning
to end, 9-11 became the call to arms, the trumpet mobilizing
both fear and patriotism onto a deeply affected populace.
The corporate media shoved the horrors of that day down our
throats for months on end through a constant bombardment of
psychologically sensitive images and messages that ingrained
in our minds the need to seek revenge through warfare. We
had been attacked, and we now had to blindly follow the
policy makers down the ever-widening road to Pax Americana.

An enemy was designated and the bombing of
mud-brick-shacks and stone-carrying-camels began. Ceaseless
government and corporate media propaganda made sure we
believed the enemy was dying in large numbers, that the
Taliban and al Qaida were suffering and that we were winning
the "war on terror." In fact, only ordinary Afghanis were
suffering at the hands of the military industrial complex.
Leveling to the ground a country that was already living in
the Stone Age did not satisfy BushCo., however, and the
neocon favorite bad guy and one time ally, Saddam Hussein,
was put in the crosshairs of the war party machine.

Hussein and Iraq had been on the scope of the neocon
tentacles since the end of Gulf War I. They had
unsuccessfully lobbied the Clinton Administration for a
direct invasion of the beleaguered nation and with Bush they
finally had a loyal puppet. With dilapidated, rusting and
obsolete Soviet weaponry along with years of UN weapons
inspections, combined with a decade of economic genocide
that was UN sanctions, Saddam posed no substantial military
threat in the region, much less to the US. Iraq was
therefore an easy target of opportunity from which to launch
the neocon vision of imperial supremacy.

Seen as the
easiest of wars to win, Iraq was conquered in short order,
thereby assuring the US of a central strategic base of
operations from which to control the Middle East and Central
Asia. Government-insider neocons assured that government
policymakers consented to the invasion both through pressure
on intelligence analysts to synthesize only that
intelligence seen as beneficial to the neocon strategy and
through stovepiping intelligence directly to the top,
thereby bypassing stricter channels of scrutiny. In the
Pentagon, Douglas Feith s Office of Special Plans was put in
charge of cherry-picking and cooking questionable
intelligence, later sexing it up for the case against Iraq.

Distortions, manipulation and propaganda was used in
concert with the corporate media to inculcate into the
American conscious the lies given as pretexts to invade
Iraq. WMD s, freedom, imminent threat, nuclear capabilities,
spawning democracy; all were excuses justifying the war, all
were lies. But a drone-like citizenry absorbed it all and
remained inert automatons of ignorance while the neocon
onslaught was unleashed. An unjust war based on fear
commenced. Fear was and still is the neocon s greatest
weapon, and its use continues to assure allegiance from the
masses that, even to their great detriment, remain willing
supporters of the neoconartist policies.

With the notion
of empire comes the idea of resource control as a way to
maintain US hegemony, and in Iraq the neocons, the military
industrial complex and the American oil/energy cartel, all
being heavily infiltrated inside the Bush Administration and
throughout the corridors of government, saw the second
largest oil reserves in the world. Control of these vital
fields of black gold also meant control of world petroleum
supplies, itself a form of economic control over the markets
of the world. One needs look no further than Saudi Arabia
and OPEC to see the power oil yields on the world stage. The
US now has the ability to feed itself all the oil it wants
and the ability to affect oil prices and output through its
direct manipulation and control of any Iraqi puppet
government. Iraqi oil can now feed the neocon/corporate
oligarch war machine and subsidize its quest for empire.

In the case of Afghanistan, Bush s oil friends and the US
government have for years dreamed of a pipeline that will
run from the vast new oil fields in the Caspian Sea region
through Afghanistan and into US-friendly Pakistan. Under
almost-exclusive American control, these pipelines will
yield substantial amounts of oil and gas. This geostrategic
venture is designed to circumvent pipelines being built that
traverse from Caspian Sea nations into Russia, China and
non-ally Iran. These pipelines, if allowed to function out
of the Central Asian oil fields, would become rivals to the
US planned oil/gas extraction pipes running through
Afghanistan. Without an American pipeline running through
the backward nation, the US would be forced to pay higher
prices for oil or gas from these rival or non-friendly
nations and would also have no control over distribution
supplies. It was imperative that a US pipeline be built.

For US continued economic dominance, therefore, it was
essential to create a US-friendly Afghanistan that would
allow for the flow of oil and gas to run through its
territory. In the year leading up to 9/11, both the
Administration and oil industry had been in negotiations
with the Taliban for such an investment. As such, the US
appointed puppet, Hamid Karzai, was once a top advisor for
Unocal, helping arrange an accord with the Taliban for
building an American oil consortium pipeline (CentGas)
through Afghanistan. When the Taliban balked at the
negotiating table they were threatened with an already
planned invasion of the country. Luckily for BushCo, 9/11
emerged, making it the perfect launching pad from which to
initiate the neocon and oilgarchy s desired assaults on
nations whose oil and strategic placements were needed for
the their master plan of world domination. Today, an oil/gas
pipeline is quickly being built in Afghanistan by an
American oil consortium.

A central tenet of the neocon
dream of a Pax Americana was control of centrally-located
Iraq where the US would eventually construct three to four
permanent military bases, a process that is becoming a
reality today. These bases will enable US hegemony
throughout the region, including control of the now
US-friendly Central Asian nations eager for American energy
conglomerate investment. With Iraq s oil reserves safely in
American hands, US military strength can now, like a hawk
overlooking its territory, keep an ever-watchful eye on the
Eurasian regions of most interest to the neocon agenda.

The idea of a democratized Middle East, an important
though illusory doctrine of the neocon ideology, was to
begin with Iraq, which would act as a catalyst to the
eventual domino effect expected throughout the region. That
the idea of democracy in Iraq and the Arab world is but a
hollow fallacy is of little importance to the neocon goals.
Real democracy will never be allowed to prosper by Bush due
to the threat of theological or fundamentalist elected
mandates picked by the majority of the people. With the
exponentially growing levels of anti-Americanism and
anti-Israeli feelings running uncontrolled throughout the
Muslim world, democracy will at the most mean the
installation of cronies and puppets friendly to both the US
and Israel under the guise of democracy. This plan assures
American and Israeli control of the Middle East, forcing
Arab nations to accept Israel s hegemony over the region. In
reality, the mirage of democracy in the Middle East is but a
propaganda tool being used to manipulate the population in
the US into remaining passive believers of an otherwise
surreptitious assault on world sovereignty.

A central
objective of the neocon agenda is increasing the power of
Israel. Indeed, many of the so-called neocons have
deep-seated connections, interests and relationships with
the right-wing Likud party and with other Israeli fringe
groups. Many are die-hard Zionists, true believers in
Israeli hegemony over the Middle East, if not the world.
From their government offices they direct US foreign policy
in favor and in direction of Israel, supporting the Sharon
government and assuring that US and Israeli interests are
placed above that of the rest of the world. The attack on
Iraq was in no small measure a war to defend Israel s
interests, thereby helping it increase its power over the
Middle East. A large part of the neocon vision for the
Middle East is for the benefit of the Jewish state, to
assure for its survival and expansion, if not territorially,
then economically. This fact must not be forgotten: the
neocons oftentimes place the interests of Israel and Likud
ahead of those of the US. The rogue government is in many
ways making us subservient to Israel s Likud party run by
Ariel Sharon.

Though not publicly discussed, the
neocon/Likud vision for Israel may potentially include the
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians into Syria or Jordan,
thereby assuring Zionists of an Arab free Israel with
sovereignty over the lands of "Judea and Samaria" that many
Jews believe have been biblically promised them. With this
diaspora of peoples might come a geopolitical shifting of
borders and the creation of new nation states that would be
less powerful and easier to control. Iraq, for example,
might one day be split into three separate nations; one for
Kurds, one for Shi a and one for the Sunni. Jordan, Saudi
Arabia and Syria might also be reshuffled to suit American
and Israeli interests.

The next targets for the neocons,
now being slowly inculcated into our consciousness, are
Syria and Iran. These two nations would most likely be
invaded in Bush s second term, thus increasing US and
Israeli dominance over the Middle East. Under the guise of
"fighting terrorism" in the continued "war on terror," both
nations would be targeted and attacked after a massive
propaganda campaign designed to incriminate both governments
in the eyes of the masses. Once invaded, they will be
installed with puppet regimes or monarchs friendly to both
the US and Israel. The next stage in the imperial plan would
thus be complete.

Empire building, neocon style, entails
the art of subverting all threats, perceived and real,
present and future, that might rise to challenge US
dominance. Among the future threats the neocon Machiavellis
foresee in their magical fortune-telling crystal ball are
those presented by China, Russia and the European Union.
Inherent in the neocon daydream is the desire to undermine
Eurasian economic development that combines the three
powerful political entities mentioned above. The danger and
very real worry concerning the cabal of crazies is that
under their control no nation will be allowed to compete
militarily, politically or economically with the United
States. It means pre-emptive action against challenges and
threats to US hegemony through military might and economic
warfare. Even the sacred zenith that is space has been
designated a new frontier for warfare. In the neocon world,
only one power will be allowed to stand among the fraternity
of nations, and that is the US. There can be no rivals, no
close second. If a nation challenges, it will be dealt with.

What we are witnessing is the creation by a group of
autocrats an oligarchs of an unstable world order where the
US will in essence have control of those nations and regions
rich in natural resources that will be desperately needed
for the continued growth of the economic engine and the
corporate Leviathan that runs this country. With world
resources such as oil and water being depleted more every
year through our insatiable demand, the modernizing of
China, India, Indonesia and Latin America and the continued
increase in the world s population, dominant countries such
as China and regions such as the European Union will
increasingly compete with us for a share or indeed the
entire pie of the unsustainable quantity of resources. To
the neocons, this must not be allowed to come to fruition.

The nation-state, with its invisible borders and
self-serving interests, will force upon us a most ominous
future. Given the destructive power of today s weapons, the
technology at a country s disposal and the widening
perversion and corruption of a nation s leaders through the
demons inherent in capitalism, we find ourselves immersed in
one of the most dangerous times in world history. We have
entered a new mutated form of Cold war: the Greed War. The
neocon unilateralist approach is widening our differences
with the world, provoking an escalating arms race and a
sprint to establish strategic base locations, a military
presence and puppet regimes in those areas of the world that
are increasingly seen as vital for the continued growth and
prosperity of a country.

Such is the case today with the
Central Asian nations enveloping or near the Caspian Sea
region. If not yet familiar with this region, you should. It
is the next Middle East, but more volatile due to both the
proximity and economic viability of Russia and China
bordering it on the periphery. Its estimated oil reserves
are right behind those of the Persian Gulf states and thus
of extreme vital importance to today s dominant players.
Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia are all becoming part of
the grand game of geopolitical chess being played out by the
US, Russia, China and to a lesser extent the European Union.
To the victor go the spoils, and with oil becoming a
dwindling yet indispensable commodity, the tug of war
between powers will only intensify.

Today, the US already
has strategic bases in several Central Asian countries.
Leaders, including the ruthless Uzbekistan dictator, are
being supported by the Bush Administration. Russia refuses
to relinquish its old relationships with the former Soviet
states, and has itself established a military presence in
the area. With China s rapid economic growth and development
and with an immense population that will demand more and
more oil the further it modernizes, it is a safe bet that
its interests are well represented in the region as well.
European energy conglomerates are also deeply entrenched in
the area. All of which leads to the conclusion that one day
soon there will be a major conflagration between nations
turned rivals. This, folks, is the future the neocons want
to impose on us all.

The example of Central Asia is but
the most widely recognized but by no means the only one.
Wars for unsustainable resources and for economic, monetary
and military supremacy will be fought by our sons and
daughters, thanks to our chickenhawk leaders who sit idly
and apathetically as the future of those whose caste has
forced upon them the destiny of fighting for the interests
of the elite is forever vanquished. In wars to come, our
zeal to kill will torch us all. Weapons evolve rapidly,
becoming more sophisticated and lethal in quick spurts of
time as technology advances. Unfortunately, humans do not.
Our animal passions remain, taking tens of thousands of
years to evolve, and while history s previous wars produced
deaths mostly among those actively engaged in battle thanks
to the primitiveness of our weaponry, that is no longer the
case. Fiery storms of untamed energy can now obliterate the
world many times over. The neocon future makes us all dead
men walking.

The new Rome, the new Caesars, the new
legions and Praetorian guard, America s future under the
neocons will resemble a fascist state run by a corporate
oligarch that subverts democracy in favor of military
control over our nation. Their actions abroad will give rise
to more attacks at home, which will give them the excuse and
reason to instill martial law, erasing both the Constitution
and our freedoms while imposing terror and destruction onto
the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be diverted
away from education, healthcare and other important social
services towards the military industrial complex and the
perpetual war for empire. Our sons and daughters will be
conscripted through the re-introduction of the draft to
defend corporate America s vital interests throughout the
world. Dangerously spreading ourselves like a gluttonous
army of locusts gorging on all that is blooming, oppressing
and exploiting both people and land, karmic hatred will one
day return. Proctors will assure allegiance, armies will
police the world. The neofascist dream will make easily
expendable ants of us all.

The hijacking of America that
began in November 2000 and continued on 9/11 has brought to
the forefront of our government a cabal of miscreants,
greedmongers, charlatans and fascists that is leading us
down into the abominable vortex of self-destruction. We are
ignorantly keeping in power an enemy lying in our wake that
is commandeering US policy and leading us towards global war
and revamped feudalism. Their ideologies are delusional in
their grandeur and out of touch with a reality that escapes
their arrogant and oligarchical minds. They are zealots,
ideologues who see the world through distorted, clouded
eyes, without sympathy or understanding for their fellow
man, living a frivolous fantasy of deranged self-importance.
Years of detachment have made them ignorant to the plight
and reality of billions. The danger inherent in the
close-knit rogue network is apparent in its actions and
policies. Its sinister schemes that we are acquiescing to
due to our indifference will come back to haunt us. The
terror we help release on the world will boomerang back to
our shores. Through our passivity our fate is being sealed.
Our cherished freedoms and liberties are slowly evaporating
into a mist of nothingness. The blueprint for the end to the
American way of life is slowly and meticulously being
executed by the enemy within. Therefore, at home is where
the war on terror must
begin.

Manuel Valenzuela is an
attorney, consultant, freelance writer and author of Echoes
in the Wind, a novel that will be published in 2004. He
lives in Madison, Wisconsin and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net
. This article is republished here at the request of its
author.

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